A Hume Divided Cannot Stand

7/28/2019 A Hume Divided Cannot Stand

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A Hume Divided Cannot Stand

By Tyler Vela

The New Atheists frequently will appeal to Saint David (Hume) in their rejection of miracles. In

this article, in brief, I will present why I find Humes On Miracles to be fundamentally

flawed on numerous levels. More can be said on Hume than what I present here however soplease, if you have any questions leave them in the comment section and I will do my best toreply in a timely manner.

1. His primary argument relies on what he has already said is impossible in the first half ofOn Miracles, that is, the logical use of induction. Hume spent the first half of On

Miracles refuting the notion of induction only to turn around and use it (and a pretty

vague concept of it at that) to attempt to disprove miracles.

His basic argument against induction is that there is no guarantee that the future will be

like the past. Partly due to his thoughts on causality, Hume says that just because every

time the cue ball hits the billiard ball in the past and the billiard ball moved, we do notknow that such a causal correlation will occur in the future. Maybe tomorrow when they

collide, the cue ball will be turned into an egg. Every morning when we get out of bed

our feet land on solid flooring. But maybe tomorrow our floor will be viscous and we will

sink right through it. We can see more clearly Humes problem with induction by lookingat a simple argument:

P1. Every jelly bean I have eaten from the jar tastes like licorice.P2. Therefore all the jelly beans in the jar will taste like licorice.

The question is, can we ever be justified in positively or certainly claiming P2? Hume

despairs and says no.

Now, I actually think that defenses of induction are possible and disagree with Hume that

we can never make inductive claims like P2, especially considering that I think one of themain differences between induction and deduction is varied degrees of certainty. So I

think induction can be reframed such that the conclusions are not statements of certainty

but rather something like P3) Therefore it is plausible (to a varied degree) that all thejelly beans in the jar will taste like licorice.

Here we can also bring in things like justification. What if there are 5000 jelly beans and

P1 is true, but I have only eaten 5. Would I be justified in asserting P3? Not really. But ifI ate 3000 then maybe or if I ate 9 out of only 10 then probably yes.

One of the inductive problems for Hume however is that he doesdeny induction. And yet

when he begins to discuss miracles, one of his arguments is that we have the universalexperience of no miracles occurring and therefore we should conclude no miracles will

occur in the future. Yet this is only possible if we say something like,

P1) No miracles have occurred in the past.


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P2) Therefore no miracles will occur in the future.

Besides the fact that this is not really even a syllogism where the conclusion is drawnfrom true premises, it would rely on some principle of induction in order for it to work.

Something Hume has already said we should not allow.

Another inductive problem is that another one ofHumes arguments, that miracles cannothappen because they violate the laws of nature, assumes that natural laws have been or

will always be the same. Think of the billiard ball. If Hume wants to deny induction by

saying that the billiard ball isnt guaranteed to move simply because it has alwaysbehaved that way in the past, then how is he able to say that a natural law cannot be

violated in the future because they have not been violated in the past? One possible

recourse would be to say that laws of nature just are things that are inviolable. Yet again,

all he is doing is assuming that because natural laws have been the kinds of things thatare inviolable in the past that they are guaranteed to be inviolable in the future.

And before you go on to say that these are facts that can be observed through science,you have to realize that you are still only appealing to inductionscience has lead to true

knowledge in the past, therefore it will lead to true knowledge in the present and the

future. It is still circular and still relies on induction.

Now, you may resolve the issue by simply agreeing with me that Hume is wrong on his

rejection of induction and therefore be free to make his argument against miracles.

However, it must be stated explicitly which position you will take. Do you deny the 1st

half of On Miracles or the 2nd

? Do you deny his arguments against induction or do you

deny his arguments against miracles? We simply cannot have both.

2. The next problem is that of the utter circularity of the probabilistic argument againstmiracles. Basically he says that we can know that miracles do not occur because we have

the universal experience of no miracles occurring. Yet can he know such universal

experience? Well we can only know that there is universal experience of no miraclesoccurring if we know that all the reports of them are false. But we can only know that

they are all false if we know that no miracles have occurred. The syllogism would be as

follows,

P1) We know that miracles do not occur because we have universal experience of no miracles

occurring.

P2) We know that we have such universal experience or no miracles occurring because we knowthat all reports of miracles are false.

P3) We know that all reports of miracles are false because we know that no miracle has occurred.

That is a circle of the most vicious kind.

Ok, those are the obvious problems. The next ones become a bit more complicated.


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3. Next is Humes assertion that miracles are impossible because they just are violations ofthe inviolable natural laws. We have already seen that this poses a problem for his

objection to induction, but now we will see that it also presupposes the truth of naturalismwhich is his intended conclusion.

In order for this objection to work, we must accept two of Humes definitions, neither ofwhich I think we should. The first is the definition of a natural law as inviolable. Thisseems a bizarre stance to take in modern times considering that most scientists and

philosophers of science would define natural laws merely as descriptions of the

normative behaviors of the natural world. All of science, and indeed natural laws,function on the assumption of caeteris paribus or all things being equal. Science and

natural law are only descriptions of what happens when nature goes about its merry way

without any interruption, injection of new information, or exertion of some other force,

natural or otherwise.

This is where C.S. Lewis famous example of arithmetic comes in. I do not say the bank

thief who robbed my bank broke the laws of arithmetic because the ledgers do notbalance, but rather the laws of California. The laws of arithmetic have not been violated,

new circumstances arose. Not all things were equal.

In fact I noticed something quite ironic a while back. This exactdefense is used byevolutionists against creationists who assert that the 2

ndLaw of Thermodynamics makes

evolution impossible. They claim that because evolution is the tendency toward increased

complexity and that the 2nd

Law is that all nature tends toward entropy, that evolutionviolates the 2

ndLaw and is therefore not possible. Besides that this is not the best

understanding of either evolution or thermodynamics, evolutionists often point out the

same response we should give to Hume. Evolutionists quite rightly point out that other

factors are at work that lead to less entropy. That is, the 2nd

Law is not violated, it issuperseded. The influence of outside actors can override the normal operation of the

natural world. Like before, it is not all things being equal.

This leads us to Humes definition of a miracle just as a violation of a law of nature. Why

must we accept that definition? Why can it not simply be the influence of an outside actor

overriding the normal operation of the natural world. We can think of resurrection as anexample of this. Many anti-theists seem to have a love affair with calling it a zombie

apocalypse but that is really just a deficient way of understanding it. Imagine that I died

of cardiac arrest right now and was rushed the hospital. The doctors would try CPR and

defibrillation on me and hopefully my heart would suddenly start again. Now, do we saythat the doctors have violated the law that dead bodies stay dead? (There is no actual

natural law to this effect but I think it is a common enough belief that dead bodies stay

dead.) Well no. We recognize that if I was truly dead (and not just swooning or

something), and all things being equal, no one did anything I would have stayed dead.But there was the intervention of an outside actor, the infusion of new information (in the

form of energy), etc. The law was not violated, the circumstances simply did not remain

caeteris paribus.


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Yet if we allow for doctors to revive patients dead for a short period of time, why is it

logically impossible (for that is Humes contention) that a being like God could not

simply do something of the sort for people dead for a longer period of time? It would notbe the violation of natural law, but merely the intervention of an outside actor inserting

new information into the system.

The only recourse to deny this as logically possible, is if one is already precommitted tonaturalism. That is, that no such being or action can possibly exist. But then one is

arguing from the premise that no such action can possibly occur to the conclusion that no

such action can possibly occur. It simply begs the question. Therefore this argument ofHumes fails.

4. The final argument I would like to look at is his argument from probabilitythat notestimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, thatits falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.

Firstly, it should be pointed out that this is not actually one of Humes arguments. It is setup in Part 1 of the book as the ground work for his later argument. It is not an argument

against miracles (as many try to cast it now) but rather is a contention about the kind of

evidence that should be permissible in the demonstration that miracles do or do not occur.

Hume continues,

(T)here is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number ofMen of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning as to serve us against all

delusion in themselves; of such undaunted integrity as to place themselves beyond all

suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of

mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood,and at the same time attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so

celebrated a part of the world as to render the detection unavoidable...

Well one could argue that it hasbeen found that there is in history an event which was

attested by a sufficient number (what counts as sufficient for Hume?) of eyewitnesses,

who give no sign of lack of good sense, education (how much is needed to knowHey he was dead and entombed and now he is eating fish with us), we have no

reason to think that they intentionally deceived others (especially since they gained

nothing from their testimony and did actually have a great deal to lose incase of their

being detected of any falsehood, and were even more disadvantaged in some brutal waysfor even asserting it. Not to mention that they did assert it publically and allowed for

contradiction even though none came.

In fact Hume states,

There surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person, than those

which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of Abb Paris, thefamous Jansenist, with whose sanctity the people were so long deluded. The curing of the


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sick, giving hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind, were everywhere talked of as the

usual effects of that holy sepulchre. But what is more extraordinary, many of the miracles

were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attestedby witnesses ofcredit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre

that is now in the world. Nor is this all. A relation of them was published and dispersed

everywhere; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned body, supported by the civilmagistrates, and determined enemies to those opinions, in whose favour the miracleswere said to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. Where shall

we find such a number of circumstances, agreeing to the corroboration of one fact? And

what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility, ormiraculous nature of the events which they relate? And this, surely, in the eyes of all

reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation.

This is just one of several examples that he gives where all of his criteria haveostensiblybeen met. And yet he goes on to say he would "still reply that the knavery and folly of

men are such common phenomena" that he would rather believe that it was a conspiracy

than a miracle. So, ironically even Hume basically admits that his standard is so high thateven in his most modern time if all the criteria were met, that he would still reject it!

Why? Because its just impossible. It just has to be wrong and that his just saying so

should be regarded as a sufficient refutation to all reasonable people. Well thats not

an argument. Its mere presumption and circular reasoning.

John Earman's principle in his bookHumes Abject Failure is much the same as my own:

"An epistemology that does not allow for the possibility that evidence, whether fromeyewitness testimony or from other sources, can establish the credibility of a UFO

landing, a walking on water, or a resurrection is inadequate." Basically, there is the

appearance of reason in the standard but when it is examined it is intentionally set up so

as to be impossible to appease. The standard itself is on principle that noevidence couldever meet the requirement and thus no fact could ever be brought to bear against the truth

of naturalism.

No eyewitness will ever be credible enough. No experiment that has the outcome of a

miracle would ever be more likely than conspiracy, etc. It is not reasonable, it is

presumptive. It is the empiricist equivalent of a fanatical conspiracy theorist riddled withconfirmation bias. Now, I am skeptical about a great many things. I think skepticism is

healthy. But skepticism that is so extreme, almost Cartesian, cannot be helpful in anyway.

Try to convince someone who has their mind made up that we are living in the Matrix

that we are not and you will be frustrated indeed. There is nothing you could ever point toin this world that would prove otherwise because everything will be infused with the air

of conspiracy. Everything would simply be a part of the construct.

To illustrate this, let us imagine that we live in a universe where miracles have in factoccurred. If we accept Humes epistemological standard then we would have set up a

standard, by assuming naturalism, whereby we could not only not know a fundamental

fact about the universe, but where we would actually be positively irrational if webelieved what was actually true. It seems to me that any standard where by true


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knowledge = irrationalism has a fundamental flaw somewhere contained within its

assumptions.

Anotherproblem is one that even Humes contemporaries noticed. They gave the

example of a Prince from a tropical land who had never seen ice. By Humes line of

reasoning, the Prince would be just as validated in not believing in ice as the skeptic is fornot believing in miracles. Hume tried to counteract this by saying that just because thePrince might be reasonable for denying the existence of ice, there were other humans

who did experience ice and therefore it is reasonable for them to believe in ice (and

indeed for others to take their word for it.) The problem here is that this just reducesdown to a subjective argument from experiencea kind of argument skeptics are loathe

to endorse. If we accept this principle, then the atheist must accept the Christians

statement of belief based on religious experience as a reasonable means of knowledge.

They might have no experience of God, but others have. The prince had not experiencedice, but others had.

It is further undermined by Earman who responds by saying that if this is so, then ifhomosapiens arose in Africa, "there was a stage in human history where the total collective

experience of the species coincided in relevant respects" with that of the prince who lived

in a tropical climate. This means that we could literally echo Humes argument that we

have the universal experience of no ice and therefore any testimony about ice existingin the future are more likely to be false.

Hume then went on to attempt to argue that for the prince, the existence if ice couldpossibly be deduced by analogy to something else. He stated that the Prince could come

to believe in a solid form of water simply by a positive analogy from other phase changes

in water. Earman makes a good point in one of his footnotes: "If one sees a positive

analogy for a solid form of water in other phase changes, why not see a positive analogyfor resurrection in near death experiences, catatonic states, and the like?"

I will end with Earman's summary which is important as a critique even in the midst ofhim praising Hume for at least identifying an important problem and dealing with it in an

interesting manner:

In 'Of Miracles,' Hume pretends to stand on philosophical high ground, hurling down

thunderbolts against miracles stories. The thunderbolts are supposed to issue from

general principles about inductive inference and the credibility of eyewitness testimony.

But when these principles are made explicit and examined under the lens of Bayesianism,they are found to be either vapid, specious, or at variance with actual scientific

practice...[Hume] was able to create the illusion of a powerful argument by maintaining

ambiguities in his claims against miracles, by the use of forceful prose and confident

pronouncements, and by liberal doses of sarcasm and irony...I find it ironic that so manyreaders of Hume's essay have been subdued by its eloquence...No doubt this generous

treatment stems in part from the natural assumption that someone of Hume's genius must

have produced a powerful set of considerations. But I suspect that in more than a fewcases it also involves the all too familiar phenomenon of endorsing an argument because


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the conclusion is liked. There is also the understandable, if deplorable, desire to sneer at

the foibles of the less enlightened -- and how much more pleasurable the sneering if it is

sanctioned by a set of philosophical principles!

Well I think that will suffice for now.

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A Hume Divided Cannot Stand